But when something is 2. Incidentally, the word "history" as used in this book refers to a past that is different than now in a way that cannot be exhaustively unraveled. This idea comes from complexity theory and owes something to information theory. Buchanan attempts to apply it to a wide variety of phenomenon with varying degrees of success. But what is really being asserted here is the mundane fact that a big change is less likely than a small change in a complex system near the edge of chaos.
Such systems: forests, the geological earth, the stock market, the international political arena, etc. This is an idea from complexity theory, and an exciting one. What it means is that such systems are in principle impossible to predict. In the sandpile game, for example, we don't know when we drop the latest grain whether it will trigger a big avalanche or a small one or none at all. This is similar to the "butterfly effect" in complexity theory in which it is thought possible that the flap of a butterfly's wings in the Sahara Desert, for example, may affect the amount of rain that falls on Cuba.
Where I think Buchanan goes astray here is in making unwarranted connections between systems by using superficial and forced similarities. For example, one of the ideas from the study of earthquakes is that there is no typical size for an earthquake. In his desire to generalize Buchanan tries to find the same sort of phenomena in the interesting study Sidney Redner did on the fate of scientific research papers.
Buchanan writes on page that there was "no typical number of citations for a paper, and, by extension, no typical magnitude for the reshaping in the network of ideas that any paper ultimately entails. Of the , papers published, , had no citations at all. Buchanan also asserts on page " Chicago, for example, is a big city not by happenstance but because of its location on a great lake and because of its proximity to the middle of a great, growing country. Similar arguments can be made about other great cities in the US and around the world.
The historical and geographical circumstances are special and they really are crucial. Buchanan further extends the thesis to include social and political revolutions.
This makes for lively reading and there is no doubt that there are similarities between the critical state of a nation before a revolution and that of a sandpile before an avalanche or a forest before a fire, but the stresses are of an entirely different sort. He sees the readjustments of governments as a way to prevent the maladjustments that lead to revolutions as similar to the small forest fires that forest managers start to prevent a large forest fire as similar.
Buchanan himself notes, still on page , "None of this is meant to be fully convincing. The message is simply that this is a real possibility. In conclusion, I disagree with the notion that the world is simpler than we think. I believe the opposite is manifestly true, and I found nothing in Buchanan's very interesting arguments to prove otherwise. An interesting book along the lines of Blink, Tipping Point. Using several global examples, Buchanan tries to show there is no way to predict future events, earthquakes, market crashes, etc.
When we imply we know how major events like these happened, it is always in hindsight. In particular I liked his example using economists predictions. There was NO case where any economist predicted any of the events we have been through. Economics is a particularly good example of his methodology since ther An interesting book along the lines of Blink, Tipping Point.
Economics is a particularly good example of his methodology since there is generations of accumulated data to pour over. Finally he discusses system equilibrium and the idea systems always tend towards a stable state. In fact he says most events are because many of these systems are in fact always on the edge of criticality and we have no way of knowing how, why, or what will cause the turning point that will push complicated systems over the edge and cause upheavals.
I will probably read this again. It's a short book and some of the mathematical models didn't make it into my brain clearly. I would recommend this book.
Oct 28, Anil rated it really liked it. If the author had included a chapter with one example, with exact step by step procedures about how these power laws were calculated, the book would've been perfect. Nevertheless, amazing book. Methods are interesting and can be googled. While I have always used the Petri dish as an analogy for human societies, I was pleased to find out that the spread and scaling of human settlements followed the same patterns as forms of bacterial growth.
The message that we should not try to learn lessons fro If the author had included a chapter with one example, with exact step by step procedures about how these power laws were calculated, the book would've been perfect.
The message that we should not try to learn lessons from conventional narrative history is useful advice. Dec 18, James Morrison rated it really liked it.
I liked it very much. It made me skeptical about some of the science I learned when I was young. Mostly, not everything is normally distributed like you might think. Science class, at least in the past, studied things we understand and when the relationship is not linear, or we don't understand the pattern it tends to be ignored. So this is a nice science lesson from a different perspective than you may have considered. One of those books that makes you look at the world in an entirely new way.
Everything from earthquakes to the stock market to the current protests about the killing of George Floyd. Why do you sometimes get a "big" event -- a catastrophic earthquake, fire, worldwide protest movement, and sometimes such things are no big deal?
Amazingly, it all can be explained and understood with very simple physical models. And the difference? There is no difference; all of these systems, from the earth's crust One of those books that makes you look at the world in an entirely new way.
There is no difference; all of these systems, from the earth's crust to forests to society, naturally settle into a "critical state" in which a tiny disruption will trigger an event, and that may or may not trigger further events. It's essentially impossible to figure out what will happen because of a given trigger, and conversely, looking back at some event, the particular character of whatever trigger started it generally isn't so important. Oct 29, Vinny rated it really liked it.
This is a phenomenal book for students of history to understand how the concept of universality in physics relates to the field. Universality simply states that under very broad conditions, interacting objects display universal features of their behavior. Furthermore, it appears that systems generally tend to move into a self-organized critical state on their own, which could result in a catastrophic event. Through a series of examples, Buchanan guides the reader through the history of the concep This is a phenomenal book for students of history to understand how the concept of universality in physics relates to the field.
Through a series of examples, Buchanan guides the reader through the history of the concept of the critical state and connects it to the study of history. The final thought that I left with was that human history is fundamentally unpredictable because we operate in a semi-independent state.
Generally speaking, our civilizations, societies and cultures appear to follow basic power laws and remain stable, yet individually we display dramatic differences in variability which in turn change many other variables. So we are able to evolve and create new tools and types of societies to attempt to bring about new levels of stability to our systems, yet we still reflect the basic characteristics at the atomic level, as defined by universality and self-organized criticality.
Jan 11, Holly Williams rated it liked it Shelves: history , philosophy , non-fiction , science. Started off strong explaining the fundamentals of power states, some solid examples with evidenced data and introduction to critical states in broad science. The earthquake power state comparison was interesting and both well reasoned and demonstrated.
The first half was useful in exploring generalised analysis of broad topics using this lens. Lost enthusiasm in the chapter applying this to economics, frequently comparing states to sand piles became wearisome as the sole application. The final c Started off strong explaining the fundamentals of power states, some solid examples with evidenced data and introduction to critical states in broad science. The final chapters concerning how this possibility might apply to history had a weak bridge, using citations data as proof of power law in the history of ideas was a stretch.
The evidence data here was also small and tangential, it felt reductive. I disagreed entirely with the great people argument and the conclusive statements here read like a level of Civilisations instead of the nuanced, data-informed analysis applied to earlier chapter.
Enjoyed the first half of the book over all. Jan 22, Steve rated it it was amazing Shelves: nonfiction , read-again. A fascinating and, I think, very important book. As part of an unofficial trilogy with Evolution of Everything and Deep Simplicity, prepare for a consciousness-expanding experience. To brutally over-simplify, the thesis seems to be that in a networked, far-from-equilibrium, non-linear world such as ours , many interesting and important phenomena from earthquakes to consciousness are described by chaos and a power law.
Thus, you can expect but never predict large events Fukushima, Great Recessio A fascinating and, I think, very important book. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what the implications of this are for real people, but it's an interesting insight.
May 29, r added it. It is about the discovery of a profound similarity not between triangles or moving objects, but between the upheavals that affect our lives, and the ways in which the complicated networks in which they occur—economies, political systems, ecosystems, and so on—are natura "'The art of being wise,'the American philosopher and psychologist William James once wrote, 'is the art of knowing what to overlook,' and this book is about a terrific step along the scientific road of learning what to overlook.
It is about the discovery of a profound similarity not between triangles or moving objects, but between the upheavals that affect our lives, and the ways in which the complicated networks in which they occur—economies, political systems, ecosystems, and so on—are naturally organized. We might add to our list dramatic changes in fashion or musical taste, episodes of social unrest, technological change, even great scientific revolutions.
Seller Inventory AAC Ubiquity is packed with stories of real-life catastrophes, such as the huge earthquake that in hit Kobe, Japan, killing 5, people; the forest fires that ravaged Yellowstone National Park in ; the stock market crash of ; the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs; and the outbreak of World War I. Ubiquity is packed with stories of real-life catastrophes, such as the huge earthqu. Items related to Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen.
Buchanan, Mark. Publisher: Crown , This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. View all copies of this ISBN edition:. Synopsis About this title Critically acclaimed science journalist, Mark Buchanan tells the fascinating story of the discovery that there is a natural structure of instability woven into the fabric of our world, which explains why catastrophes-- both natural and human-- happen.
Review : Earthquakes, market crashes, hurricanes, wars: are these random forces of nature, or foreseeable blips on the radar screen of history? Buy New Learn more about this copy. Other Popular Editions of the Same Title. Search for all books with this author and title. Customers who bought this item also bought. Seller Image. Published by Crown New Softcover Quantity: 5.
Seller Rating:. Published by Broadway Books New Soft Cover Quantity: 5. Stock Image. New Softcover Quantity: 1. Booklot Philadelphia, PA, U. New Paperback or Softback Quantity: 1. On the basis of this insight, scientists are finally beginning to fathom what lies behind tumultuous events of all sorts, and to see patterns at work where they have never seen them before.
In this simplified setting of the sandpile, the power law also points to something else: the surprising conclusion that even the greatest of events have no special or exceptional causes.
After all, every avalanche large or small starts out the same way, when a single grain falls and makes the pile just slightly too steep at one point. What makes one avalanche much larger than another has nothing to do with its original cause, and nothing to do with some special situation in the pile just before it starts. Rather, it has to do with the perpetually unstable organization of the critical state, which makes it always possible for the next grain to trigger an avalanche of any size.
To this, John Mauldin adds :. First, Hyman Minsky who should have been a Nobel laureate points out that stability leads to instability. The more comfortable we get with a given condition or trend, the longer it will persist and then when the trend fails, the more dramatic the correction.
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